


Finding Your Fangs

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Background Kuwata Leon/Maizono Sayaka, Coming Out, Developing Friendships, Gen, Gender Identity, Hypothetical Character Study, Hypothetical Relationship Study, Slice of Life, Trans Fujisaki Chihiro, Trans Kuwata Leon, Trans Male Character, some internalized sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22945867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: One of a set of gifts for my best friend's birthday!The characters for Reon meant“wise and graceful”, which never felt quite right.In katakana, the name becameLeon, meaning"lion", which sat far better.And hey - what's a lion without a pride to run with?
Relationships: Fujisaki Chihiro & Kuwata Leon & Oowada Mondo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37
Collections: Punks Never Grow Old - Flynn's Birthday 2020





	1. Finding Your Fangs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flynn Zephyr (fwynnzies)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fwynnzies/gifts).



The characters for _Reon_ meant “wise and graceful”.

It had never felt a hundred percent right.

She guessed she was glad it wasn’t cutesy - not that she disliked cutesiness, on principle, although it never really felt it was _for her_ , and as far as she could tell at the time, it was only for that reason that she’d started distancing herself from friends with names like Mimi and Yukari and Mitsuko going into middle school: some kindova by-proxy embarrassment and _that’s not me_.

The name still felt… _corny_ , somehow.

She wasn’t very academic, or quiet and serious, and she thought of herself more the hot-young-blooded _take life by the balls_ type than some granny in the making. That was the kind of taste it left in her mouth when she considered baking _“wise”_ into someone’s name.

“Graceful” felt even grosser. She _liked_ graceful, and even admired it, but it in friends; like cuteness, it was for people other than her. People more... _delicate_ than her.

She had physical finesse, all right, at least - but it took a form a lot less like a flower swaying and dancing with a slow wind or a bird riding the cruise of a current in its soar and quite a bit more like a sprinting rabbit, paws hammering like a drumroll against the dirt.

Reon had been called a tomboy before, and yet she wasn’t quite sure she agreed. She _was_ utterly sporty. She _had_ starting using the word _“boku”_ a couple of years ago.

But the fact that there was a word like _tomboy_ for girls like her just felt... _judgy_. It underscored those facts with a caveat of _despite being a girl_.

It made her feel like she was trying too hard, and therefore, paradoxically like she was being laughed at.

She didn’t like confrontation. Too much stress; too many bad vibes. She was some-key _scared_ of any strong not-nice emotions.

But she let the burn of embarrassment and offense sit behind her face - glowing and heating up the coals - on this matter, because, once it had built enough to spark, she knew she’d be able to show ‘em. And to do so wouldn’t require her to try hard, at all.

Even as much as the boys at school were terribly shy around her and embarrassed to share a gym class with her, and had always been this way even on so much as seeing her out on the playground, they hadn’t saved themselves for having reason to feel that way. Everyone knew she was the fastest runner in school, and the most deft and quick and auto-calculating with the swing of a bat or the throw or the kick of a ball.

This included the teachers.

There was hemming and hawing and twiddling of fingers - but she was a hundred percent sure that there was no way anyone was _really_ going to stop her from trying out for the boys’ baseball team. To do so would be a loss for everyone.

She was right.

Mom and Dad were briefly confused, but ultimately encouraging; it was rare to see her so specifically-driven, to do something that’d look so good on her school record as fight ( _ha!_ ) to get on a team that she’d surely be disadvantaged in even during tryouts.

And the staff pretended they wanted to keep her out. Like she oughta just think about it before tryouts happened, like she needed to look at herself and see if she was really sure she wanted to do it. She was, because, although she didn’t say this, she was absolutely sure likewise that she’d _kick the booty_ of every other contender.

She _knew_ that they were pretending, because once again, any of them whose opinions mattered knew that she was the best athlete in the school just as well as the other kids did. Despite all their awkward shuffling and side-eyeing each other and coughing into the sides of loose fists, they weren’t gonna be stupid enough to turn down a potential win machine for their school in every tournament to come.

Of course she was pleased with herself when tryouts and, thereby, her chance to shine finally came. There she was under the sun and in uniform, thick dark hair pinned a dozen times to mostly fit under her cap, stretching as she stood in front of the umpire waiting for the bat to be handed off to her with the extra flourish and bounce of a dance or a swagger, already grinning, resisting the temptation to wink at the kid who finally brought that bat.

She wanted to leave no room for anyone to question her. No throwing two strikes to score a homer on the third swing for her.

On the first pitch, the bat cracked, and the ball soared in a perfect line in the air. Like a fleeing bird.

She was impossible to catch as she sprinted to one base, and then the other. A moot point, because it wasn’t until she’d already stomped over third that they’d found the ball. She felt laughter building in her chest and just below the base of her throat like violently-shaken soda-pop bubbles as she heard the other kids calling out to each other to coordinate passes.

They managed to get the ball maybe halfway to where it needed to be by the time she strategically tipped and threw and slid her weight for a perfect touchdown-satisfying slide onto home plate.

She spent the rest of the tryout unable to stop smiling, chin held so freakin’ high and eyes just-squinted over cheeks beginning to go sore against suddenly-enhanced sunlight; she bounced on the soles of her shoes in between more moves too fast, too clean, and too damn _oomph-y_ for the others to keep up with.

She would go on to have no memory of whether or not she stopped smiling between that tryout and that first team photo she was still sporting it in - all the bigger and with teeth just-parted to let out some of that soda-pop laughter.

She had stopped being a tomboy, or good at sports for a girl, at that point.

Reon was now just an athlete.

As soon as she went into official play, she began turning heads. The one girl on a boy’s team, their most skillful player.

So soon, and Reon was not just good at sports for a girl, or a novelty, or even just an athlete; she was finding herself becoming a _star_ athlete, at least as far as national school sports were concerned.

She smiled and reflected, laying in bed at night with her arms crossed behind her head. Nodding to herself.

She was going to need to practice signing autographs. In a way that felt nice and _her_. One more way that with the further simple movements of signing her name, she could strut her stuff not as the tomboy but as the rising star. Plain and simple.

Plain and simple.

...She arched a brow, popped an eye open and scanned the ceiling as if trying to visualize, brow furrowed.

Hiragana was an option. But katakana would be cooler. Punchier. Sharper-edged. Packed with that _oomph_ she was showing the world she had.

It would make the name Reon look Western, she realized.

Reon was a Western name, wasn’t it? A boy’s name.

Except in the West, the name was actually Leon. Like “lion”.

Not so _wise and graceful_ , she thought - mouth opening ever so lightly.

Or maybe lions were graceful. They were cats, after all. And they were hunters.

They had to be graceful in much the same way she did - a way there was nothing delicate about. A way that meant making the most out of being fast, and strong. They were wild, and cool.

...Her eyes lit up; her chest swelled and shoulders pulled up higher on her bed as her arms wrapped tighter together, smiling that smile for the third time in what would, in retrospect, come to feel like an in-between new reality which had very little in the way of sensible passage of time at all.

She had _got it_ yet again, nice and hot-bloodedly certain, and yet what she’d gotten was a thought that was only half-formed and about a quarter understood, at this time.

 _Leon Kuwata is_ here _._

 **_Leon_ ** _Kuwata is_ **_here_** _, and he is going places._


	2. Boys And The Butterflies

Leon Kuwata had gone places, all right.

 _His_ star had continued to rise.

 _He_ had signed his name so freakin’ much by now that he’d just about well-enough engraved his identity into the fabric of _space-time_.

 _He_ had gone from exciting new novelty fresh on the field to the - _the_ \- Ultimate Baseball Star.

...It felt kinda… hollow at this point, for sure, after having spent so long now without a point to prove over something that had just been a game before.

Boring.

But… he certainly couldn’t complain about having _his_ name up in lights.

Most kids in the country daydreamed about going to Hope’s Peak Academy at some time in their lives. While he hadn’t ever specifically aspired to it or even been entirely sure back then what he’d want to be in for, what he’d ever want to be his thing, he _was_ still living the dream.

 _He_ was undeniably somebody - and, he had come to realize, the best and most oh-my-god exciting part of that?

...It was being somebody _to girls_.

It had taken some time; he hadn’t been entirely sure what his… rekindled interest in their attention and congratulations had meant for some time after his big break.

He’d been drifting away from girls for a while at first, after all, hadn’t he?

But no - all of a sudden, he’d snapped right back around to wanting their recognition.

Especially from all those girls he’d admired before - the ones he couldn’t ever bring himself to be. The delicately-graceful and sweet ones who shone like the white moon behind clouds; the ones about whom something felt… _purely_ feminine. Girls who looked good in ribbons and lace, and had this way of moving like they were walking on the air, and had gentle smiles and soft-and-light voices and big, sparkling eyes.

Was kinda silly, maybe, in retrospect, but ha -- ...he couldn’t deny that it had tripped him up a bit. Pulled his heart stretched into a band like it was a rubber replica of itself and tied it in knots he’d sometimes feel tuggin’ at his ribs as if trying to crack them inward all day. Never had he quite narrowed down what was doing that in any kind of way that’d give it a shape and a name, but it had been something like… disloyalty.

 _If people like them are so great, are you_ sure _you wanna give up being one of their crowd?_

_Are you sure you really wanna back out on any chance you could’ve possibly still had to be like them if you just tried? Get to be seen by them all the time? Get the boys mooning over you, too?_

...Boys.

He’d come to a conclusion on this by now, but as all of this’d unfolded, he’d asked himself if he’d ever really been interested in boys. He’d often hoped his lithe-’n-athletic figure was appreciable, sure - and he’d showboated on the field. This had all been, really, for the sake of the attention itself. That it came from boys was just… incidental.

It had never really _mattered_ the way attention from _girls_ ever had.

Particularly not the way attention from _these specific kinds of girls_ had quickly come to matter.

It made sense, in retrospect. He hadn’t realized it at the time, and still didn’t in this much conscious detail, but the attention of girls had stopped making him feel self-conscious and instead begun making him feel like the king of the world once he had taken that first step to prove and showcase that he _was_ , in fact, different from them.

Once he’d stopped being just a tomboy and become an athlete.

A _star_ athlete.

Who plays with boys.

...It had started feeling like it was coming through a filter of being seen with new eyes.

And they were eyes that he realized he rather uniquely _liked_ being seen with.

He’d come to Hope’s Peak with his best foot forward - made-over with flaming-red hair and a face and ears embellished and bristling with metal rivets and rings; punk rock surely had the same fiery and rough-edged and blood-pumping _cool_ energy that baseball had in the past, eh? But with the extra swagger of music over something that kids get their start playing in the park - surely, _that_ could be the cure for his… _staleness_. He’d even managed to grow his goatee out nice and long and prominent by the start of term - coming into the Ultimate life with his face worn unmistakably. In a big way.

And now that he was here, ha... 

_Damn._

Did a lot of the girls here look like they had eyes worth catching, all right.

You had girls like Junko and Celestia - the kinds of girls you see in magazines, even Junko’s early-bloomed career aside, with makeup like painted dolls and outfits like princesses. Their grandeur, however, made them kind of forbidding - drop-dead gorgeous, but not the kinds of girls you feel you ought to bother trying to impress.

Not that it wouldn’t still be nice for it to happen.

Then you had girls like Aoi. Also very pretty, but in a much more down-to-earth way, yet also a brighter one. She was sunny; inviting where Junko and Celestia were imposing. He liked that sweetness - and yet she wasn’t quite his type, either. He suspected it may be the sportiness - the kind of point of similarity rather than contrast that made her feel like someone he’d rather be friends with than, perhaps unfairly, really see her “as a girl”.

Then you had Sayaka, who was perfect.

She really was.

He’d never been that much of a pop guy, nah - considering himself to have a musical side at all, to be fair, had only been a past-couple-of-years dawning advent. But even if he hadn’t done his curiosity-pouring through the notes on who his classmates were going to be, surely, he would have been able to tell that she was some kind of a _star_ the first time he’d seen her in class, or heard her speak. She _epitomized_ the kind of delicate charisma that Leon had always found admirable, but now realized he found fascinating and hypnotic - the sort of bright-but-poised grace that felt both _airy_ and _shiny_ and _full-bodied_ and _weightless_ all at once, like imagining a creature made of subtly-pink sunset clouds.

While girls like Junko and Celestia felt _queenly_ , girls like Sayaka felt like something more _ethereally_ noble than that.

Like she was a princess, but a princess from another, brighter realm.

Trouble was, however, that he wasn’t the only person looking her way, because _of friggin’ course he wouldn’t have been_.

That wasn’t just in general, either, because _no duh_.

She was already friends with another one of the boys in the class. _Friends_. Not just classmates. _Friends_. She’d known Makoto ever since she was little; had already begun gravitating towards him, as someone familiar, even among and as if it was a reprieve from socializing with the _other girls_.

It made sense, Leon supposed, that she was used to seeing that kind of mingling with new people as making new fans and acquaintances and business-hand-shaking, she supposed. And that was the arena that, in relation to her, he was in. Makoto was the only one who wasn’t.

And as for Makoto himself…

_...Pfftshh..._

...He really was the Ultimate Lucky Student, all right.

But the good news was that…

...Perhaps there _were_ still people he could get to know.

Girls, no less.

Chihiro hadn’t been one of the first girls in the class he had _“really noticed”_ , no. But then again, he supposed that had been what she was… “going for”. She was very timid. Very quiet.

But she was cute.

She may not have had that almost otherworldly charm and poise that Sayaka had. Not so much of that shine, either - he supposed it was all a result of how _small_ she tried to seem; her restraint and shyness.

But she absolutely had everything else.

The delicate subtlety, the gentle touch in every thing he’d seen her do or heard her say, and the sweetness. She may not have smiled as often as Sayaka always seemed to, but when she did, it absolutely shone like sun through the rain. She had a soft little voice that swelled with rushing air when she became happy or excited; her eyes rounded and filled with a _glittering_.

While he still thought about Sayaka, he’d started to daydream.

He saw himself making some joke or suggestion to Chihiro when she was down - couldn’t hear just what it was, in these daydreams - and seeing her burst into bright, twinkling laughter, facing going from on the verge of tearful to _glowing_. He saw them walking down the street together in January, and her starting to shiver, and himself putting his coat around her shoulders. He wondered if perhaps she did have a side to her, too, with that otherworldly enchanting poise, and if he’d see it if, one day, he were to become someone she wouldn’t shrink quite so much around, or if there even were such a thing.

And it had to count for something that he could see any of these things, and enjoy them.

Didn’t it?

Like with anything else, it had to be possible if he timed it right, hit it from the right angle. He was a handsome, popular boy, and like any handsome, popular boy, there was no reason he, too, couldn’t hit the act of _asking a cute girl on a date_ out of the _park_.

He cringed to himself, privately, on the thought that baseball sure had poisoned his mind.

But he followed that logic, all the same.

He waited for the right timing.

And waited.

And waited.

Half-heartedly trying to sidle closer to Chihiro after class while everyone else was filing out of class for the day on moments she seemed to be lagging behind, only to be swept up chattering with Mondo, or Makoto, or Yasuhiro, leaving him gone in a couple of ticks with a white-flashing grin and two too-wide shifts of his eyes back over his shoulder at where Chihiro would be, still sitting at her desk with her computer bag freshly-open and her laptop out.

Trying to grab a spot next to her during lunch and finding Kyoko or Sakura there instead.

He couldn’t help but not press the issue. He was, after all, waiting for the right timing. These things happening meant that the timing wasn’t right. _Right?_

_...Right._

The timing couldn’t have more clearly been right to discuss _things_ when, accompanied by a rippling slam of a heartbeat and him staring like a deer in the road, timid and hesitant Chihiro had caught _him_ leaving class before the other guys could.

Asked, with her head down and fidgeting her hands and the soles of her shoes, if they could talk behind the building.

Leon wasn’t quite sure his face had ever been hotter.

But he had accepted, of course, with a voice-cracking laugh and a quick round of ruffling his own hair - fidgeting for fidgeting. He’d made a beeline for the back of the building and waited, mind spinning and spinning and spinning and rattling like a cartwheel. Chihiro wanted to ask him out, he told himself. That had to be it. This was how confessions played out. Maybe Chihiro had noticed him looking and waiting, or perhaps she’d been looking all along. That had to be it! Still, he continued to play with his hair, adjust his coat, pace and stretch as if warming his system up for a game as an outlet for continuing to feel his blood and breath moving just a little too hard.

Face still burning hot at the thought of another fresh _first_.

While his breathing and his heart rate felt like they slowed on his eyes pinning at the tiny shape of Chihiro rounding the building and approaching - or perhaps that was just the time-slow of adrenaline - they certainly felt as if they were hitting all the harder.

A hard, hard steady beat.

His smile twitched. He scratched the back of his head again. He greeted Chihiro with a “Hey!” that was, like his acceptance had been, a bit too harsh; breaking at the edges.

He actually said it, too fast to think about it, when Chihiro stopped in front of him - head down, again; hands laced in front of her, again; eyes averted, again.

“What’s up?” he said. “You got, like… some kind of secret confession for me...?”

Chihiro was silent.

She didn’t look at him. Kept her eyes to somewhere in the grass, fingers playing lightly against each other.

He just barely felt his smile slip. Gradually. Bit by bit.

Not out of dread, nah.

But out of uncertainty, certainly.

When Chihiro finally turned her face up to him, it was as if she hadn’t paused.

“Mm,” she said. A soft little sound, but with one firm, decisive nod, before her eyes began to drift back off of his face and to the side, her hands coming up to fiddle with the bow on her collar. “Actually… but… first, I have a question to ask you.”

Her voice held low. Serious.

It wasn’t a question she was _excited_ to ask.

Leon’s head fell slightly tilted. Mouth, likewise, faintly open.

She looked back up at him - subtly; one small quarter lift of her head, eyes doelike under the partial cover of her hair. “I-if it wouldn’t be rude for me to ask you to talk about it, I mean…” She shook her head out a tad in a couple of tiny flicks; blinked long and hard before her eyes darted up to his face again. “A-after all, I know _I_ wouldn’t be able to talk about it if someone asked _me_ about it…” Head back down in an abrupt bow, voice softer and trailing. “ -- Then again, I’m such a coward that this is the first time I’ve talked about it for a long time…”

It was Leon’s turn to pause.

The rush-of-blood-and-breath had stilled; turned into more of a compression that held still in his chest. The heat in his face had cooled. In a couple of still blinks, his eyes had gone just a little bit bigger.

It wasn’t so much as at the base of his tongue, no.

But _this is a question you can only ask_ **_me_** , was a thought floating and turning like fog in the back of his head. _Out of everyone else in the class._

He knew that the question was _still_ one it was going to be his first time having to answer.

He needed to stir his body back into movement.

Felt like it was five seconds after he signaled himself to that he finally nodded his head - clumsily, as if he was stirring from sleep.

His reflexes were never that bad.

“...Hey, now…!” he said. Voice too sharp and high again, and somewhat drifty, with the intent to sound friendly. “...Talk to me, Chihiro.”

Turning over the card, revealing the question and whether he’d be proud or terrified to take it on.

Chihiro nodded again, twice and jerky this time. “O-okay… Thank -- thank you so much,” they softly said.

There was another pause.

When Chihiro finally lifted their head up, their eyes were shining polished-glass with tears.

But there was a hardness in their brow over them. Intent and thoughtful. The wobble to their voice was surprisingly slight.

“...How… did _you_ know that you’re a boy?” he asked. “You’re -- fast, and _strong_ , and athletic, but… there must be more to it than that, doesn’t there? Did… those things just make it easier for people to believe you?”

Leon liked to consider himself strong, as well as fast, and athletic, all right.

And the question, when looked at from the outside, was bigger than he thought that it would be.

Between proud and terrified, he found himself uniquely both.


	3. In Inclusion

Leon _thought_ that the conversation had gone well.

 _Thought_.

He thought that every subsequent conversation he’d had with Chihiro had gone well, too.

Thought.

Chihiro never begrudged him, after all, whenever he made it clear that Chihiro was the first person like him he’d met, and had to talk about their respective experiences with _boyhood_ with. ‘Fact, Chihiro unfailingly apologized for putting pressure on him.

Which… made Leon feel all the more awkward than he already felt trying to rack his brain to come up with answers to his questions. To put thoughts that he hoped Chihiro would find useful and relatable in a way that scanned as, in fact, _useful and relatable_.

After all, Chihiro had been through a lot.

And Leon… felt like he should feel guiltier for feeling lucky.

He’d been often confused before he was certain who or what he was. He’d felt the need to prove himself before he’d at all openly embraced it.

Chihiro was past the point of _confusion_ , and so he couldn’t help with that.

But _proving himself_ was the problem.

And Chihiro had already found that to be much harder than Leon knew how to say anything about.

Anything _useful and relatable_.

Leon had, before, been seen as a _tomboy_ , but at least, so to speak, that was still _something-boy_. He’d already been seen as “boyish”. He’d been sporty and strong.

It could have been far harder to get others to accept any proving that he’d tried to do.

Leon, himself, had seen Chihiro, at first, as one of the _coolest kinds of_ **_girl_**.

He’d admitted that to Chihiro, awkwardly. Just to clear the air. Apologize. It had been another thing that gnawed at the bottom of his stomach out of awkwardness as Chihiro had explained his thoughts, his experiences. Another thing Chihiro, unsurprisingly, swore he understood, and didn’t hold anything against him for.

Chihiro also swore that it didn’t even matter that Leon sometimes plain didn’t have advice. Sometimes didn’t _really_ know what he was talking about. Sometimes tried cheerleading, but found himself able to tell from the little wobble and falter to Chihiro’s smile, to his chagrin, didn’t hit the note - wasn’t the encouragement he was looking for.

He swore that at times like those, he was still more than grateful enough that Leon listened to him.

While Chihiro claimed to be grateful, Leon most definitely, definitely didn’t feel like it was enough.

The most it felt like he actually did came about the… one or two odd times that Chihiro had choked up, and Leon had… tried to give him a comforting hug.

Tried, because it seemed like the kind of thing you did in that kind of situation.

Yet more that had felt awkward.

Leon was a physically-affectionate person. But casually. He was a back-slapper and an arm-around-the-shoulder-thrower and a secret-handshaker and a bear-hugger - not a comfort hugger.

He was the kind of person who wasn’t sure he really knew _how_ to give comfort. Not when things were… heavy. Being around people who felt bad just, well… made him feel bad. He didn’t know what to do with sad people; he liked to do his best to avoid all those nasty feelings like _sadness_ or _fear_ or _the kind of boredom that makes you wonder what you’re doing with your life_ at all costs.

Yet it was the only thing, apparently, he _could_ consistently give Chihiro.

This left… something hanging in the air, nowadays.

Technically, things were good. For _Leon_ , at least. Twice this week, he’d successfully ditched baseball practice and snuck past Kiyotaka to go get freakin’ lunch out with Makoto.

...Tangentially speaking of Makoto, Sayaka had been talking to him, too.

Yet again, someone he’d wanted to talk to had approached him first. She’d smiled at him and his heart had auto- _bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbump_ ed as, with a coquettish little cock of her head and her whole face shining like a _ray of sunshine on a window on a bright spring day_ , let him know that she’d heard he’d been thinking about getting into music. Asked him if he might be interested in getting a bit of coaching, in performance, writing, style, business.

By now, they’d written a song together.

Just a simple basic-chords verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-chorus affair about birds written in a simple rhyme scheme, but still.

They’d even sung it together.

He absolutely had his hopes up and he didn’t care.

He should’ve been on top of the world.

But he couldn’t be, because he was distracted.

Perhaps it was the guilt talking - or muttering, at the least - but he was distracted because while _he_ was fine, and things were going well for _him…_

...he just wasn’t entirely sure what was going on with _Chihiro_ anymore.

With how the things he _could_ and _couldn’t_ do never seemed to change, for one, he’d come to feel - awkward yet again - that their meetings had come to a standstill.

He didn’t like standstills.

What made it worse was that they had become less frequent.

He wasn’t so imperceptive as not to have _noticed_ , and once he had, it’d been bad enough then. Leaving him wondering if, like… in spite of all of Chihiro’s reassurance, it had essentially been a bad performance evaluation. Like Chihiro had finally decided that he agreed - it was too awkward. Leon was, in fact, _too bad_ at talking about all that kind of stuff. There’d been a couple of nights by this point that he’d tossed and turned almost comically-fast and comically-wide-eyed in bed wondering what he even _should_ have told Chihiro - what the kind of help and advice he needed even actually _was_.

He was also not so imperceptive as not to have noticed since that, meanwhile, that Mondo, too, had started _cutting out of things_ more and more frequently.

 _I got another commitment, guys,_ he’d said more than once, looking off to the side with his eyes all-the-further cast off - not so much dismissive as _eh, dismiss_ ** _me_** \- with a hand raised loosely in front of him. _You’re gonna have to go ahead without me, all right?_

He had _suspected_ what was going on.

But done so _incoherently_.

After all, there hadn’t been… much to _latch onto_ about the idea.

After all, why would Chihiro be going to hang out with Mondo? Mondo wasn’t _like them_ \- as far as Leon knew, anyway. Chihiro had said he had difficulty sharing the truth with others. Therefore, did Mondo even know? If not, Mondo was not normally the type to hang around with the girls - too used to the company of a rowdy gang of men.

And then, en route to one of his unofficial music classes with Sayaka, he’d realized he’d forgotten his brand-new songwriting notebook in his gym bag, and that he’d forgotten his gym bag in the gym.

Had gotten too busy thinking about Sayaka, honestly, as a reprieve, for once as of late, from fussing about Chihiro.

Poetic irony.

He’d gone to the gym, and seen Chihiro and Mondo. Off to the corner - Mondo instantly recognizable due to his size and hairstyle, Chihiro needing some time to register with his emphasized smallness next to him.

They’d been on the ground, Mondo aggressively doing push-ups with the rhythm and force and _oomph_ of a frickin’ heavy-duty industrial machine, as Mondo was wont to do things. Chihiro had been next to him, posed as if at the starting line of a sprint, watching him intently.

And then all the pieces had tumble-cascaded into place.

He’d suddenly had his _why_. It had suddenly made sense and become fact-not-almost-hypothetical-theory that, yes, Chihiro was now hanging with Mondo. Blanks filled in: Mondo did know. Chihiro was coming to him for help.

And the spiraling of thoughts into _ahhhhhh, I see_ had spun, likewise, a…

...an oddly bitter-warm verge-of-a-fever feeling that started in the base of his gut. Spread up under his skin until he felt it around his skull and starting to slow-burn-up his brain.

Chihiro was _replacing_ him, he’d been thinking since then. It hit sharp and like a quick strike from a hammer.

Sometimes those strikes were rapid. Thump-thump-thump-thump like a frantic heartbeat. Of course Chihiro was replacing him, he thought those times. Would he be doing so if he had been able to do provide him with real advice? Why hadn’t he offered to help teach Chihiro become more athletic? _Well, one, ‘cause you hate training._ But maybe he wouldn’t have under important circumstances like these if he’d _only thought about it._ _And two, ‘cause, I mean, you were thinking more about telling him that he doesn’t hafta be athletic to be a dude._ Point, point.

But then, if he’d been doing nothing wrong, why would Chihiro be replacing him?

Surely Chihiro had been able to tell that his heart was in the right place.

...Sometimes, those strikes were slow.

Measured.

Individual.

_...Violent._

The slow, slow mulling over of…

_...jealousy._

Chihiro never meant ill will to anyone, no. And Mondo… it made sense that Mondo would be helping out Chihiro. He never turned down a bro in need, whenever he could help it - stuff he learned from that crazy gang life again; gotta always watch your crew’s backs.

So it felt like… there were unfair rules in place that made it so that, whether he was good or bad at it or not, on some technicality, Mondo _deserved_ to be the one Chihiro turned to.

Leon only had one clue what that technicality could be:

Mondo was a _“real”_ man.

...And Leon couldn’t deny, that wasn’t just in terms of him being a _“normal”_ one. Mondo fit every idea that came to one’s mind when they talked about what it meant to be a _real man_. Big and strong not only but in body but in bold presence and sheer assertiveness. Never afraid to throw down when crossed or take on a challenge; almost recklessly brave.

A _badass._

Of course Chihiro would want to model himself on _that_.

...There was that _bitter, queasy swirling_ again.

Was Mondo something _he_ could never be?

...He felt that old need to prove himself again.

 _He_ could be assertive, too. Take on what was ailing him.

Mondo had excused himself from hangout time with the guys again. Leon’s adrenaline spiked as his mind snapped to focus on what he intended to do.

This wasn’t the tidiest route, no. And in one way, it wasn’t the most direct. But in another, it was. If all went according to plan, it could even be a pleasant surprise, he told himself.

He made a snatching grab for his bag and hauled it onto his shoulder. Made a beeline for the gym.

Paused at the window by it in the hall. Scanned in a couple of flicks of his eyes.

There they were - Mondo and Chihiro again. Different corner from last time. Easier to spot, though - upright and doing weight training now, Mondo with the big-and-daunting black dumbells and Chihiro with the little blue one-pounders.

He zapped himself back into gear, coasting to and around the bend of the hall and leaning up against the door.

The light and air shifted as he broke into the gym - Mondo and Chihiro’s heads snapped toward him, and Chihiro jumped back and squeaked.

“Leon?” Mondo said.

“Heyyyyyy, guys!” Leon said, putting on his biggest grin, chin held high, swaying his weight onto one leg in… _fake_ it-ain’t-no-thang-this-is-normal nonchalance. Might have, however, put just a bit too much laughter into the delivery, as an outlet for the fact that he suddenly realized his heart was hammering. “I didn’t know you were workin’ out in here today, too! Mind if I join in? I bailed on practice again today, but now I’ve got a ton of mobile energy to burn off…”

Mondo quirked an eyebrow.

Meanwhile, Chihiro stared. Huge-eyed. The processing kind of stare.

...And then his face lit up in an open smile.

A pleasant surprise, indeed.

* * *

Physical training hadn’t been so fun in a long, long time.

That figured, though.

Serious exercise was one of those things that was only fun when you wanted to do it. He’d chosen to drop in.

And not only that, but this had been a _personal_ meet-up. Like an informal club-type thing, he felt.

It had been, well… hanging out.

Chihiro had seemed relaxed. So had Mondo. It had felt a tad bit like making up for lost time that hadn’t actually been lost with them. All three of them catching up with each other. Closing a kind of loop.

Mondo had thanked him for looking out for Chihiro.

This had mildly surprised him - not because he shouldn’t have expected that Mondo would have said something like that, but because he still hadn’t quite thought that he _had_ been.

“I can help him out in what way _I_ can, man, but…” Mondo had continued, looking thoughtfully off to the side into some imaginary sunset on the horizon. “...he doesn’t open up to me about everything, you know? You know he hates feelin’ like he’s wasting anyone’s time… Good to know he’s been able to get shit off his chest to someone he trusts’s got more of that perspective, right? Who’s gonna have a better idea of what he’s really talking about.”

...It still hadn’t felt like much.

But Leon had… gotten something else, he figured.

And he’d nervous-laughingly thanked Mondo for doing the same, too, his mouth running ahead of his conscious brain before he could catch himself really figuring something else.

 _Looking after people_ had been the key.

It hadn’t just been because Mondo had been strong and tough and manly, not at all.

Another reason Chihiro had started going to Mondo, too, _was_ that Mondo watched backs. Covered people. He was reliable. If Chihiro had wanted to come out to someone else, surely he would have been in safe and helpful hands with _Mondo_.

Mondo wasn’t just a boy; Mondo was a _brother_.

And when you were a friend of Mondo’s, you were a _brother_ , too.

Chihiro was, likewise, therefore not only a boy now, but someone’s brother.

...Ha.

And considering Leon was a friend of Mondo’s, too, he realized…

...that made two someones.

Mondo slung his bag over his shoulder. Took point back out of the gym before the three stopped in front of the door. Started to turn and leave - paused to give a look and a confident grin and a halfway-salutey wave over his shoulder. Turned it with a little turn-of-the-wrist into a thumbs-up. “Same time the day after tomorrow,” he said. “All right, guys? I’m countin’ on you both to show up now.”

“Y-yes, of course!” said Chihiro, standing on his tippy-toes and fidgeting with his hands again. “Thank you, Mondo…”

“‘Ey - that means you, punk!” A bit of extra sharpness to Mondo’s smile as he pointed. “This is a _three-way promise between men_. Make this the training you _don’t_ bail on.”

Leon laughed, only half-nervously, running his hand back through his hair, feeling a swell in his chest. “C’mon, I wouldn’t _dream_ of it, man! You can call it training, but I’ll be over here calling it… spending more time with my bros!”

Chihiro smiled a very soft-eyed, very warm smile.

Turned it down to the floor - but Leon hadn’t seen any indication through the corner of his eyes that it wasn’t holding.

“Tchssheh - you do that…! ...Catch ya later, bros.”

“Thank you, guys,” said Chihiro, near-silently.

“Hey,” said Mondo, heartily.

Leon finished, “No prob, man.”


End file.
